Good and evil in the war on terrorism

Re “You can’t play it safe with terrorists,” Opinion, Sept. 28

Jonah Goldberg’s analysis of the current wars in the Middle East rests on one mistaken assumption: that those who fight against U.S. invasion of their lands are pure evil, that their resistance to foreign invasion and occupation has no legitimacy, that they are the embodiment of evil and we are the embodiment of good.

When Goldberg laments the possible cancellation of a Mozart opera because German authorities want to respect Muslim sensibilities, I wonder if he also laments German laws that prohibit anti-Semitic expressions. Is one form of censorship good, another evil?

CLARA WATSON

Garden Grove

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Enough with the false analogies. Terrorists are not bullies, they’re not cornered animals, they’re not the Third Reich or 1941 Japan. Israel has fought them for decades, and how close is that country to winning its war on terror? Fighting terrorists as we would bullies simply won’t work. By doing so in Iraq, we find ourselves in a situation in which we can neither stay nor leave. The correct strategy is to empower the mainstream Islamic moderates -- by supporting their modernization and weakening despotic regimes -- so they can diminish the terrorist threat from within their own societies.

CRAIG BORETH

Santa Monica